Through the last months of 2017 and into the Spring of 2018, a series of posts were published on danish design review about Danish chairs ... each post was about a specific chair but these were posted in a relatively random sequence sometimes following a type or a designer but not in date order.

Here those posts are set out in chronological order and as further posts are added about other chairs from the 20th century they will be included here.

There is also an INDEX to fast-scroll through the list of chairs included.

Having looked at and written about a number of Danish chairs that were designed in the 20th century, it seemed important to include this chair - The Snake Chair designed by Poul Henningsen - not because it is remotely representative - it is actually perversely unique - but because it is distinctly modern in the materials it used.

With a single coil of tubular steel to support the seat and back, it breaks with almost all conventions, but, curiously, it also appears to be 'of it's period'.

So if someone who did not know the chair was asked to guess its date they would, at the very least, see that it is unlikely to be a recent design but nor is it old, in the sense of being traditional or conventional. If then told that it dates from the 1930s many would see that it fits with the general style of that period … with aspects in common with furniture from the Bauhaus in Germany or with Art Deco furniture from France or the Netherlands. It appears to be even more certainly of that period when you see photographs of the chair along with the piano that Poul Henningsen designed so a combination of materials - tubular steel - and a sort of deliberately outrageous look sets a sense of a style of a very specific period.

The form of the chair is the product of a highly individual and unconventional designer who was known for his work designing lights that were - and still are produced by the Danish company of Louis Poulsen - but Poul Henningsen was also a journalist - he wrote for Politiken and edited the journal Critical Review - was an advocate of jazz music - wrote enthusiastically of his admiration for Josephine Baker when she performed in Copenhagen - wrote songs himself; was a filmmaker and was - appropriately - architect to the park at Tivoli.